1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to transportation, and more particularly to an apparatus and system for monitoring and managing traffic flow.
2. Discussion of the Background
With ever increasing road traffic levels there is a particular need for the monitoring and management of traffic congestion, fuel consumption, environmental concerns from C02, safety related concerns, traffic flow and idle time. Existing systems generally depend on direct visual observations produced by infrared receivers for emergency vehicles that are not reactive enough if at all, video image vehicle detection system (VIVDS) that need to be humanly monitored and are inconsistent with detections due to having an engineer manually draw and adjust the detection zones repetitively, and loop detectors that are fairly expensive and have a high failure rate with limited capabilities. Such techniques can only provide extremely limited management if any at all for vehicles and are too imprecise for more sophisticated management of traffic flow and there associated variables to maintain a safe network, energy consumption read outs, vehicular maintenance warnings, and the like, and are generally not automated.
Thus, there currently exist deficiencies in monitoring and managing traffic flow.